North Korea justifies its nuclear ambitions by defining South Korea's approval of nuclear-powered submarines as an 'act of nuclear propagation'

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Eun-jung = North Korea denounced the U.S. build-up of nuclear forces and extended suppression of its allies as 'acts of nuclear proliferation' and made the sophistical argument that South Korea's nuclear-powered submarines approved by the U.S. will eventually lead to the possession of nuclear weapons.

North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this in a memorandum titled "The United States' Nuclear Propagation Acts a Serious Challenge to International Peace and Security and Our Unchangeable Response Choices" released through the Korean Central News Agency on the 29th, defining the United States as "the main culprit of vertical propagation that is driving the global nuclear nightmare."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs argued that the United States' approval of South Korea's possession of nuclear submarines was "a dangerous development that adds new instability to the political and military security environment in the Asia-Pacific region."

He also said that by approving uranium enrichment activities during the 2015 Nuclear Energy Agreement revision negotiations, the United States "turned on Korea's nuclear ambitions to grow into a 'quasi-nuclear nation.'"

Furthermore, he made the far-fetched claim that “cooperation between the U.S. and the U.S. nuclear submarines, which advertise the use of low-enriched uranium fuel, will eventually realize Korea’s dangerous nuclear ambitions to secure the right to enrich weapons-grade nuclear materials and even nuclear weapons.”

In addition, the United States handed over technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons through the 'Atomic Energy Agreement' signed with Korea in 1956, and deliberately covered up the circumstances in which plutonium was extracted from Korean nuclear reactors in 1998 and 2003.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also sharpened its focus on AUKUS (US-UK-Australia security alliance).

The Ocus Agreement, which has the provision of nuclear submarines and the transfer of nuclear technology as 'two key pillars', is a plan by the United States to create "the world's largest nuclear submarine alliance in name and reality," and added that Australia can make 160 nuclear warheads with the nuclear submarine fuel it will receive.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the United States' history of nuclear development by detailing it.

Starting with the United States' first nuclear test in 1945, the scale of nuclear weapons possession and the process of nuclear disarmament negotiations with the former Soviet Union were mentioned with specific figures, and the blame was placed on the United States for disrupting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed in 1968.

The number of U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, increased from approximately 1,700 in 1960 to approximately 3,200 in 1967, and approximately 1,720 nuclear weapons were deployed in Korea as of 1985.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed out that the establishment of a new nuclear strategy that places particular emphasis on the United States' tactical nuclear weapons "shows that it is proudly establishing itself as a practical weapon to be deployed on the battlefield in case of emergency, rather than a 'deterrent' to be deployed for the purpose of 'eliminating threats' from enemy countries."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserted, "Today's geopolitical situation, in which the international nuclear order has reached a state of complete collapse due to the United States' radical build-up of nuclear power and blatant nuclear propagation, requires our country to play a more active role in protecting world peace and global strategic security."

At the same time, they justified the advancement of their nuclear forces by saying, "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's choice of action as a responsible nuclear weapons state will be thoroughly based on the serious reality that it is unable to control the United States' strengthening of nuclear power and nuclear proliferation maneuvers, which are beyond the limits of any international organization or international treaty."